You Know It Is Cold When

Wearing thick wool socks, leggings, jeans, two shirts, a sweatshirt, and a hat indoors is comfy.

The dog has to wear shoes outside to keep her feet from freezing, and she likes them.

Dreaming of horrible punishments for the person who put the bathroom on the northwest corner of the house seems perfectly reasonable.

Using the toilet involves singing a high C (cold toilet seat).

It is necessary to close the tub drain while showering to keep one's toes from going numb with cold (300# forged steel tub-massive heat sink)

After taking an extremely hot shower you crawl back into bed and don't break out in a sweat.  It is just nice and warm all over.


Guess what, the temperature is actually above zero Fahrenheit today.  We're having a heat wave!

Morning's Discussion

Me:

"Wow, there is someone moving about in the bedroom.  He's alive!"

Hubby:

"No I'm not."

Me:

"So you're a hibernating zombie?"

Hubby:

"Yes."

Chloe's Fortune Cookies

As mentioned previously, fortune cookies are a tad more interesting when read to the family dog Chloe.

So here is fortune #1
"Some people dream of worthy accomplishments while others stay awake and do them."
(Well, Chloe does think she is a person, but we know which kind she is.)

Fortune #2
"You cannot run away from yourself; you're always right behind you."
(Perhaps a few idioms were lost in translation.  Maybe it should have read "Your but follows you everywhere, unless you are walking backwards.")

Have a lovely Saturday.

Chivalry is Alive and Well

As previously mentioned, the pellet stove has been misbehaving lately.  Well, yesterday morning began with it refusing to feed properly and repeatedly shutting down.  So I had to let the furnace heat the house while I went outside to do the snowblower dance.  (Hubby was sleeping again after waking up coughing; he was doing a very good imitation of a barking seal.)  The hot Coca Cola trick seemed to work and he was able to get some extra rest.  Upon putting the snowblower away, I remembered that the windshield washer fluid in the car was probably getting low.  I sprained my thumb when the stubborn hood release finally let go with a sproing (followed by a loud pop from my thumb).  After filling the fluid and slamming the hood a bit harder than was necessary, I went back in the house and told hubby of all the morning's accomplishments.  Once I had taken a shower, it was decided the thumb should be inspected by a real doctor.  So hubby kindly drove me to the doctor's office and waited in the car so he wouldn't cough all over the other folks in the waiting room.  After the appointment, he drove me over to mom's house to give her injection.  Then over to dad's place to make sure the furnace there was behaving itself.  Keep in mind he mentioned he was hungry just after the doctor's appointment.  So the last stop was the grocery store where we picked up a few things and some cooked chicken for dinner.  After dinner hubby removed the auger mechanism on the pellet stove, and after a fair bit of poking, scraping, and grabbing with a grabby tool and hemostat this chunk of crud finally fell out of the feed chute.  Our best guess is that it formed one time when the power went out and has been rolling around in there causing the pellet stove to behave as if it were constipated.  Now that the blockage is cleared, it runs a lot better with hopefully no more jams.

It is nice to be handy, but it can be so much nicer to have my very own handyman to take care of things at times.  Face it, this big old house has more than enough projects to keep both of us really busy.

Here's supper for my handyman.

Cod from the grocer's sell-it-quick section (breaded and fried in some canola oil), broccolli from the freezer, and yes those are instant mashed potatoes, because I probably would have hurt myself further trying to peel potatoes with a gimpy thumb.

Enjoy.

Any Ideas?

or suggestions on what foods might be easy to prepare with one hand and one paw?  Take out is a nice treat once in a while, but not something to have as a regular habit.

Or should I ask hubby for help?

I miss having two opposable thumbs.  Glad this is only temporary.

Thank You Lord

For this take-out food and the sustenance it will provide.  Thank you Lord that my left thumb isn't broken but merely sprained.  Thank you Lord for hubby's income to pay for x-rays.  Cold weather and the hood release latch on my car did not mix well; unfortunately the windshield washer fluid needed filling.

Oh, and thanks mom for the weird genetic inheritance of thumbs that only bend near the ends and not in the middle, except for when they get dislocated/jammed backwards.  The doctor had to examine the right thumb to get an idea of what my thumbs look like normally.  It is really astounding how often I usually hit the space bar with my left thumb.  Ouch, did it again; it is probably a habit picked up while using shortcut commands in AutoCAD where the space bar can also double as the enter key leaving the right hand free to mouse about.  Good night all, it is time to alternate cold and hot.  The cold should be pretty easy to find.  My back yard is full of a fresh supply of cold white stuff that will conform nicely to a slightly swollen thumb shape.  The hot could be interesting; I need to do dishes.  Hope I don't drop too many.

No Surprise

Winter came back.  We had two days when the temperatures were above freezing.  It was positively balmy.  Now it is snowing again, and blowing.  I had to plug the attic roof vents on the north end of the attic, because snow doesn't belong inside the house.  I'm just terribly picky that way.

Now it is time to grab some dinner and go downstairs to sort through wood pellets.  We ended up with a brand this year that obviously wasn't screened very well.  If the really long ones aren't broken into shorter pieces, they tend to cause mini-log jams in the pellet stove feed mechanism.  Then the stove shuts down, the house gets cold, the furnace fires up, the house gets really warm (on the 2nd floor mostly), and the oil tank in the basement gets emptier faster than we would like.  Yes, I have found an activity even more boring than shredding mom's old paperwork - sorting pellets.  On the plus side, it is a good excuse to sit in front of the pellet stove and get warm and toasty for a few hours.

Hope you all are safe and warm.

Oh, Where Did The Day Go?

Now I remember; the weather did it.  We have gone from deep freeze to ice capades.  It took 50 pounds of ice melt to get the ice loosened a bit from the city sidewalks and a small path to the garage.  Then there was the task of spreading more salt at mom's and then another stop at dad's house to sprinkle more salt on the sidewalks.  Both of their driveways are gravel and utterly hopeless.  The cross country ski poles came in handy for keeping my balance and avoiding landing on my can.  This is one of those occasions when I find having divorced parents to be tiresome.  Thankfully, the store still had some salt in stock.  Hopefully 200# of rock salt, a 50# bag of the low temperature good stuff for mom's place, and 120# of sand will do the trick.  The ride home in the Element was very smooth with all that extra weight.  It is supposed to get up to 37 tomorrow afternoon.  Maybe the sun will actually do some work and melt the ice.

It Has Been Another Year

of orbiting the sun;

another birthday has been celebrated.

Now I can say that my age is the same number

as one of hubby's favorite calibers.

 (Dad's hobby was photography and developing.)

There's no point in dawdling.

It's time to roll up the sleeves and dig into another year

of sometimes fun and messy things to do.

Tidbits

Winter provides lots of unanticipated activities, such as

kicking over the stalagmite under the neighbor's furnace exhaust.

And seeing the smirk of satisfaction on Chloe's face when she managed to ditch one of the accursed boots in the driveway.  You can almost see her thinking "one down, three to go."  I tried downloading a video, but blogger didn't take it for some reason.  Maybe the file was too big, or perhaps blogger doesn't accept video made on very old cameras anymore-who knows.  Her silly walks get a little less silly the more she wears the boots.  I really wish we could have shared the sight of her doing side kicks and high-stepping marches with the rest of you.

No, No, Please Not the Boots!

"Mom, I promise not to dawdle when going potty

if you never ever make me wear these boots again."

This afternoon she tried pooping

while standing on only three feet.

It is currently -17 degrees Fahrenheit with a wind chill of BRRR.

Whoosh, Splash, and Slip and Slide

are so much more fun in the summer,

rather than when the temperature is below zero F

with strong winds.

Just how much damage does 30psi water

do when allowed to run loose?

Quite a bit.

When I checked on dad's house yesterday, the furnace was working fine, but river George was threatening to wash away anything within its reach.

The city crew was less than trilled to be plugging a broken water main on Friday night.  It took them four hours to patch it.

I would have loved to offer them a hot beverage, but alas, there was no clean water.

 I doubt the cherry trees in the front yard will survive this.

 The water main break was actually across the street,

but it traveled underground across the street into dad's front yard before gushing out of the ground.

A very large amount of the dirt from dad's front yard is now everywhere else but there.

Are There Really any Fun Ways

to exercise?

Tae Kwon Do is fun, mostly.  It is a good workout for large muscle groups (you know-the ones you sit on), cardio, and flexibility.  Unfortunately, paying the teacher is a bit out of the budget at the moment.  Practicing alone doesn't work very well.  Motivation is so much easier when the teacher is yelling out orders and you know that he has ways of making you do what should be done.

Add into that the middle age pudge, the infamous thickening in the middle.  So I was looking into exercises that specifically target the abdominal muscles.  I have heard pilates produce results, but from what I can see of instructional videos from the library, it looks like a lot of really boring work.  Then some other workout videos caught my eye.  Wonder if belly dancing would help?  Unfortunately the music is really whiney, monotonous, and well, boring.  Wonder what would happen if someone tried belly dancing to a Scottish reel or country music instead?

Can exercise ever be fun,

or did Adam and Eve wreck any chances of that in the garden?